School Spotlight

The Ohio State University

Location:Columbus, Ohio

Type:Public

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Speech Code Rating

The Ohio State University has been given the speech code rating Yellow. Yellow light colleges and universities are those institutions with at least one ambiguous policy that too easily encourages administrative abuse and arbitrary application.
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Freedom from harassment, including sexual harassment, as well as threats of intimidation and physical or emotional harm. This includes acts of ethnic or racial intimidation, hazing, or harassment for reasons of race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, or veteran sta... Read More

All postings must support the educational mission of the University and may therefore not contain information about the following, including but not limited to alcohol; the sale and solicitation of for profit good or services (exceptions may be made for charitable donations); and non-inclusive or biased related mate... Read More

The core missions of the university are research, teaching and learning, and service. Preservation of academic freedom and free and open exchange of ideas and opinions for all members of the university are central to these missions.
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In the education context, sexual harassment is unwelcome, sex- or gender-based verbal or physical conduct that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it interferes with, denies, or limits an individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from the university’s educational programs and activities. ... Read More

Unwelcome, verbal or physical conduct based on an individual’s protected class that is (1) sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive such that it unreasonably interferes with, denies, or limits an individual’s ability to participate in or benefit from the university’s education and employment programs and activi... Read More

On June 1, 2020, during a protest following the homicide of George Floyd, three student journalists from Ohio State’s student newspaper, The Lantern, were covering the protest from a campus-adjacent intersection in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Although a curfew was in effect for the city, it did not apply to members of the news media. Police… Read more

On November 30 and December 6, 2011, students were prevented from peacefully distributing flyers in OSU’s Ohio Union building. The same Ohio Union administrator on both occasions told the students that OSU’s “green zone” environmental policy prohibited distributing paper materials. On the second occasion, the administrator additionally cited the building’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental… Read more

FIRE, joined by the Student Press Law Center and the College Media Association, wrote today to the Ohio State University and the Columbus Division of Police after three OSU student reporters were pepper-sprayed by police last night while lawfully covering a protest near campus. The reporters were exercising their rights under the First Amendment’s guarantees… Read more

Earlier this month, two universities in central Ohio removed flyers and stickers proclaiming “It’s okay to be white,” as well as those purportedly promoting the white nationalist organization Patriot Front, from their campuses. And once again, the FBI is reportedly investigating the postings, adding more data points to an apparent trend towards involving the FBI… Read more

Mike Adams, a professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW), is no stranger to controversy. In 2014, Adams won a First Amendment lawsuit alleging that UNCW retaliated against him for his public expression of conservative views. Now, Adams once again finds himself at the center of a debate over the boundaries of free… Read more

For the past few months, we’ve been covering the statements campus leaders make about free speech at their colleges or universities. In the weeks following this month’s presidential election, campus leaders have addressed their students’ reactions to the results in various ways—some “good,” and others “bad” for freedom of expression. The Good Central Washington University… Read more

On Monday, Inside Higher Ed published a lengthy defense of “bias response teams”—teams largely composed of administrators and law enforcement who direct a university’s response to reports of offensive language or conduct, usually (but not always) under the guise of educating the offending speakers about the impact of their speech. But the same administrators are… Read more

As I’ve written about on many previous occasions, there are a large number of ongoing lawsuits by students alleging that through unfair campus sexual misconduct proceedings, their institutions violated their constitutional due process rights, breached contracts, and discriminated against them on the basis of sex. In the past eight days alone, there have been four… Read more

Public universities must tolerate students’ off-campus speech even when it offends some, or most, of the student body. Recent incidents at Old Dominion University (ODU) and The Ohio State University (OSU) serve as reminders that this is not always what happens. At both universities, students adorned their off-campus residences with signs offering a less than… Read more

With colleges and universities revising their sexual assault policies for the new academic year and legislation on the horizon that could have serious repercussions for campus due process, it is critically important for policymakers to stay committed to protecting the rights of all students. Advocates for due process are stepping up to ensure that as… Read more

The Student Press Law Center’s (SPLC’s) “FERPA Fact” Tumblr is at once humorous and disturbing. It awards a number of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan heads corresponding to the silliness of a university’s misuse of the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to deny a request for information. FERPA is routinely abused by colleges… Read more

An opinion piece published today in The Lantern, a student newspaper at The Ohio State University, decries the tendency on the part of colleges and universities to misuse and abuse the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). The editorial draws upon a recent report in The Columbus Dispatch, which has also been… Read more

This past Tuesday, which saw the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, FIRE sent President Obama a letter detailing the violations pervading America’s higher education system, and requesting that the President and his administration join the fight against unconstitutional speech policies that threaten the liberties of millions of students…. Read more

An independent student newspaper at The Ohio State University (OSU) has published an article today highlighting the fact that FIRE has classified OSU as a “red light” school and discussing FIRE’s work on campus. In this month’s edition of The Sentinel, OSU student and Campus Freedom Network Member Debbie Bitzan writes: As the largest university… Read more

This fall, The College of William & Mary launched a Bias Incident Reporting System “to assist members of the William and Mary community—students, staff, and faculty—in bringing bias incidents to the College’s attention.” In its initial incarnation, the system was fraught with constitutional problems, from both free speech and due process standpoints. The system initially… Read more

FIRE announces its Speech Code of the Month for September 2007: The Ohio State University. The Office of University Housing at Ohio State, a public university, maintains a Diversity Statement that severely restricts what students in Ohio State’s residence halls can and cannot say. Students are instructed: “Do not joke about differences related to race,… Read more

In November, FIRE wrote a nine-page letter to Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) to urge the prestigious honor society to hold its member institutions to higher standards of free speech and expression. A PBK spokesperson has claimed that “for 225 years we have endeavored to place our chapters only at those American institutions of higher education… Read more

Today, FIRE announces a victory for freedom of religion and association at Louisiana State University, where the Muslim Students Association (MSA) recently attained official recognition. The group, which had already been recognized for 30 some years on campus, was unable to re-register for more than a year because it didn’t want to include additional “nondiscrimination”… Read more

COLUMBUS, Ohio, October 4, 2004—The Ohio State University has agreed to change a “nondiscrimination” policy that prohibited religious student organizations from making critical decisions based on religious criteria. The decision came a few weeks after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) wrote to Ohio State on behalf of a broad interfaith coalition of… Read more